Aging is not for the faint of heart, as the saying goes, and many elderly Americans find that growing old gracefully means sticking to a schedule of prescription medications. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that adults 65 and older make up 13 percent […]
Laws permitting some type of marijuana use have been on the books since 1996, when California first legalized the sale and consumption of medicinal pot. Today more than 25 states allow for medicinal marijuana and among those, eight have legalized recreational marijuana. Generally speaking, advocates […]
The 2016 numbers are in and research shows yet another year of declining drug and alcohol abuse among eighth, 10th and 12th grade students. The caveat is marijuana use in these demographics, which spiked in 2015, has remained relatively stable. “Clearly our public health prevention […]
Amidst news of the Trump administration transitioning into the White House and constant pundit chatter about a deeply divided country, President Obama signed The 21st Century Cures Act on December 13, 2016. The bipartisan effort is perhaps one of the most comprehensive pieces of legislation […]
For many people, the phrase “black box” conjures images of emergency officials searching for a downed airplane’s flight recorder in hopes of discovering just what exactly caused the accident. There is, however, another type of black box. The Federal Food and Drug Administration, the agency […]
For the past 65 years, the American court and prison system is where the majority of people struggling with substance abuse and the addiction end up. Of the nation’s 2.3 million prison inmates, more than half – 65 percent or 1.5 million – meet the […]
It’s an eerie coincidence that so many talented musicians and artists lost their lives at the age of 27, a phenomenon dubbed The 27 Club. Set aside the various conspiracy theories about the unenviable club’s membership and the unfortunate realities, in some of the cases, […]
Most people of a certain age will remember First Lady Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug campaign “Just Say No.” Then came a Partnership for a Drug-Free America’s iconic ad “This is Your Brain on Drugs.” Following that was the Drug Abuse Resistance Education or DARE, founded by […]
As the nation’s battle with opioid addiction continues to ravage entire communities, there’s been scant reporting on how the epidemic’s touched the lives of children. In a recent study, however, researchers examined 15 years of data from children’s hospitals and found that children are suffering […]
Global consumption of the opioid Tramadol, a drug that in some parts of the world is unregulated, increased 186 percent between 2000 and 2012, reports the International Narcotics Control Board. In the United States, the synthetic opioid analgesic received government approval in 2010. By 2014, […]
